Explaining agentic commerce is not complicated. Intent goes in, and the AI handles the rest. What makes it consequential is the scale of what it now includes: authorization, scheduling, comparison, purchase, and reconciliation. Humans once managed each of those steps. Increasingly, AI will manage them instead.

The report, Agentic Commerce: Market Insights and Outlook for the United Arab Emirates, commissioned by Visa and conducted by Fast Company Middle East with Probity, surveyed C-suite executives and transformation leaders across retail, consumer products, travel and hospitality, and financial services. It points to a market that is committed but cautious, gearing up for a phase of commerce that will be faster, more personalized, and more secure.

In conversation, Fadi Moukaddem, Senior Vice President and Group Country Manager for Visa across the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar, reflects on what is driving businesses toward agentic commerce, what continues to hold them back, and why the next two years could look markedly different from the last.

DEFINING AGENTIC COMMERCE

For Moukaddem, the core definition is clean: “AI acting on your behalf to complete a purchase securely, with your permission, and within parameters you set.” What he finds striking is the speed of the shift from concept to reality. With 59% of UAE business leaders already expressing interest, “this isn’t theoretical anymore. Organizations are actively trying to understand and apply it.”

In the UAE, the approach is proactive rather than observational. Companies are experimenting and testing in real time, driven by the country’s broader AI ambitions rather than a desire for incremental operational gains. Moukaddem expects disruption to emerge first in sectors where transactions are frequent and customer expectations are already high, including retail, travel, hospitality, and financial services. But the impact is already spreading beyond those industries. Visa’s work with Aldar suggests that real estate could be among the next sectors to embrace agentic commerce.

Payments sit at the center of it all. “Ensuring transactions are seamless, secure, and reliable is critical,” he says. The disruption, in his view, is less about any single sector and more about where strong digital journeys already exist.

THE LOYALTY BET

The report’s data challenges a common assumption about enterprise AI: that the primary motivation is cost reduction. In this survey, customer loyalty and retention ranked first among expected business outcomes at 33%, ahead of revenue growth and new customer acquisition.

“What stood out in the data is that businesses aren’t approaching this as a cost-cutting exercise,” Moukaddem says. “They see AI as a way to grow and to fundamentally improve how they serve customers.”

That perspective, he argues, reflects a broader philosophy across the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar, where innovation has long been viewed as a driver of economic growth rather than simply a tool for operational efficiency.

The loyalty logic is intuitive once you follow it through. When transactions become frictionless and personalized, the consumer’s reason to switch diminishes. Moukaddem points to Visa’s voice-enabled payment deployment with Aldar, where residents can settle service charges by voice command, as the kind of low-drama, high-impact interaction that builds durable relationships. “It removes friction and builds trust very quickly,” he says. In markets as competitive as the Gulf’s, that trust compounds.

CUSTOMER IMPACT DRIVES ADOPTION

The report also found that 34.7% of organizations make technology adoption decisions primarily based on customer impact, making it the most important driver ahead of leadership mandates, market pressure, or experimentation. Moukaddem says this is an encouraging sign because it indicates that businesses are starting with customer needs rather than technology itself.

“It’s a very important signal that around a third of organizations are making technology decisions based primarily on customer impact. It means you’re starting with a real problem and not just deploying technology for the sake of it,” he says.

He cites Aldar’s voice-enabled payment experience as a practical application of this approach. Rather than showcasing AI as a technical capability, the goal was to simplify an everyday task for customers.

“Paying service charges isn’t something people particularly enjoy, so making that process faster and voice-enabled is a very practical improvement,” he explains.

A customer-first approach also extends beyond functionality to the overall experience. Organizations need to consider how intuitive interactions are, how much control customers retain, and whether the process is transparent and easy to navigate.

“Ultimately, it’s about making innovation genuinely useful, not just impressive,” he says. Looking ahead, he believes the companies that gain the most from agentic commerce will be those that focus on solving meaningful customer challenges. “The winners in agentic commerce will be those who move beyond experimentation to solve real customer problems,” he adds.

While agentic commerce is still in its early stages, Moukaddem believes several indicators suggest the technology may be approaching a broader adoption phase. He notes that interest among organizations is already strong, with pilot programs underway and businesses beginning to make more substantial investments. “You can already see the foundational pieces coming together. Interest is high, pilots are underway, and organizations are starting to invest more seriously,” he says.

The survey findings reinforce that momentum, with nearly every organization surveyed planning to invest in agentic commerce over the next few years. According to him, the combination of growing demand, active experimentation, and increased capital allocation often signals that adoption is about to accelerate. “That combination of demand, experimentation, and capital typically means adoption accelerates quite quickly from there,” he explains.

Another encouraging sign is the emergence of real-world use cases that demonstrate how the technology can deliver value in practice. “We’re also starting to see early examples of how this works in practice, which is always a strong indicator that a technology is moving closer to wider adoption,” he says. However, he notes that the true inflection point will arrive when organizations consistently achieve measurable outcomes and gain the confidence to deploy agentic commerce at scale. “The tipping point will come when businesses see consistent, repeatable outcomes and feel confident scaling,” he adds.

Nearly 70 percent of organizations are already exploring or piloting intelligent purchasing systems, and for Moukaddem, that places the market firmly in an early phase, though one where momentum is building quickly. “We’re still early in the journey. Most organizations today are exploring or piloting rather than operating at full scale.”

The signals pointing toward scaled adoption are clear: defined timelines, real investment, and strong engagement across the ecosystem. Visa is working closely with partners, including Emirates NBD, Mashreq, ADCB, Wio, NBK, KFH, and QNB, many of whom have already joined its Agentic Ready program.

Importantly, this is no longer just theoretical. With Aldar, Visa has already enabled “a live, voice-led agentic payment,” real-world execution, and it is these kinds of use cases that start to accelerate adoption.

TRUST IS THE REAL BARRIER

The most significant finding in the report is also the least expected: the primary barrier to the adoption of agentic commerce in the Gulf is not a shortage of technical capability, skilled talent, or infrastructure. It is trust.

“The technology itself isn’t the barrier, trust is,” Moukaddem says. “Once AI starts acting on your behalf, the expectations change. People want to know that decisions are being made safely, that their data is protected, and that they remain in control.” As the technology shifts from offering recommendations to executing actions, the questions that matter change too: not ‘is this useful?’ but ‘is this authorized?’ and ‘is this within my parameters?’

The governance implications are practical. Organizations deploying agentic commerce need consent frameworks, authentication layers, and defined risk management protocols. Moukaddem points to financial institutions as being modestly ahead: governance and risk management are already core to how they operate, which provides a structural head start. “The focus shifts to questions like consent, authentication, and risk management,” he explains.

Visa is working across the region with issuers including Emirates NBD, Mashreq, ADCB, Wio, NBK, KFH, and QNB, many of which have joined its Agentic Ready program. The governance conversation, Moukaddem says, is actively evolving alongside real-world deployments. “Over time, as the ecosystem matures and regulators align, I’d expect much greater consistency in how these frameworks are applied.”

CLOSING THE INTENT GAP

When the distance between intent and transaction collapses, when wanting something and having it purchased become nearly simultaneous, the competitive battleground shifts. The transaction itself is no longer the differentiator. What differentiates is the quality of the experience surrounding it and the trust the consumer has placed in the system to act on their behalf.

Moukaddem frames Visa’s role as infrastructural. Through Visa Intelligent Commerce, the company is working with financial institutions and partners like Aldar to build the payment layer that agentic transactions depend on: secure tokenization, reliable authentication, and scalable authorization.

The direction of travel is toward transactions that are less visible but more consequential. “The experience may become more invisible,” he says. “But trust becomes even more important.”